This Propels Asian-American Kids to Head of Class

MONDAY, May 5, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Asian-American students have a reputation as high achievers, and a new study suggests their success comes mainly from hard work rather than innate ability.

It's well known that compared with white students, Asian-American kids tend to get higher grades, do better on standardized tests and are more likely to go to college -- including elite universities.

"What we've lacked is an explanation," said Amy Hsin, the lead researcher on the new study and an assistant professor of sociology at Queens College, City University of New York.

In general, Hsin said, there have been three "competing theories" on why Asian-American students tend to excel.

One is that their families have higher incomes and are better educated, versus other minorities and whites. Another, Hsin said, is that Asian kids are "just smarter."

The third theory is that Asian Americans typically put more effort into their schoolwork. And based on the new study, that's the best explanation.

The results, reported Monday in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are based on data from two long-term studies of U.S. students. They included almost 1,000 Asian Americans, and over 4,000 whites.

Overall, Hsin's team found, Asian Americans got better grades -- an advantage that kept growing from elementary school to high school.

But when it came to tests of basic reading and math abilities, there was no clear difference between results from Asian-American and white students. Nor did parents' income and education explain the gap.

"We found that even newly arrived Asian immigrants with little formal education and low incomes have children who do better in school than their white [U.S.-born] peers," Hsin said.

Instead, she said, it seemed that hard work was the main factor.

The two surveys included teachers' ratings of students' attentiveness, motivation and work habits. And those ratings, Hsin's team found, correlated well with Asian-American students' higher grades.

An expert who reviewed the study said it was "very well done."

"It gives empirical evidence that some of the achievement gap can be explained by hard work," said Sumie Okazaki, a professor of applied psychology at New York University.